Jamdhar/katar why do we call it a katar?

ariel · 8th January 2014, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Help

However in 'The Arms and Armour of India' Egerton places Jamdhar Katari as Nepalese weapons.

Even funnier: Egerton's plate of Nepalese weapons has a picture of a typical Ottoman yataghan.

I think he grouped the weapons according to the place where he or his agents bought them. Had he managed to buy a Balinese Keris that somehow found its way to Afghanistan, we still might have argued about its true origin :-)

Well, he spent literally only a couple of years in India as a tourist and did not have Stone or suchlike as his reference book:-) Forgivable errors of a novice collector. Pity it acquired a patina of authority.

Jim McDougall · 8th January 2014, 05:32 PM

Absolutely Ibrahiim, and one of the true conundrums of studying ethnographic arms is the confusion in terminology which constantly plague students using old resources and contemporary accounts. In many cases transliteration and regional semantics, particularly in India where so many languages and dialects are present, certain forms are called by varying terms.
Ariel, good note on Egerton, and actually his work was so well venerated as it was indeed a seminal work on ethnographic arms (it was 1880 while Burton came out in 1884). While other writers such as Walhouse and others had written articles slightly earlier, his work was far more comprehensive and overall actually reasonably accurate aside from these errors . I believe his book was a catalog but cannot recall the occasion, and the items were listed according to the donors or submissions.

It is interesting that early writers indeed relied on other works, and some errors in Burton (1884) are traced to Demmin (1877). I can recall an instance where an item was identified as Tibetan from the Oldman catalog (1909?) while the exact same sword was classified as from Benin in West Africa with an example collected by French donor to a museum in Belgium. Research revealed the item in Belgium was indeed African.
If I recall correctly Stone has a sword identified as Italian which is actually British cavalry 1780s.

I always maintain great respect for all authors of books and articles on the difficult topics of arms history and classifications, and I believe virtually all of the books carry certain disclaimers in the introductions, as well as sincere hopes for others to continue the research to resolve the inevitable errors.

I like to think that we are among those who sort of 'pick up the torch'

8th January 2014, 05:32 PM	#2
Jim McDougall Arms Historian Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Route 66 Posts: 10,192	Absolutely Ibrahiim, and one of the true conundrums of studying ethnographic arms is the confusion in terminology which constantly plague students using old resources and contemporary accounts. In many cases transliteration and regional semantics, particularly in India where so many languages and dialects are present, certain forms are called by varying terms. Ariel, good note on Egerton, and actually his work was so well venerated as it was indeed a seminal work on ethnographic arms (it was 1880 while Burton came out in 1884). While other writers such as Walhouse and others had written articles slightly earlier, his work was far more comprehensive and overall actually reasonably accurate aside from these errors . I believe his book was a catalog but cannot recall the occasion, and the items were listed according to the donors or submissions. It is interesting that early writers indeed relied on other works, and some errors in Burton (1884) are traced to Demmin (1877). I can recall an instance where an item was identified as Tibetan from the Oldman catalog (1909?) while the exact same sword was classified as from Benin in West Africa with an example collected by French donor to a museum in Belgium. Research revealed the item in Belgium was indeed African. If I recall correctly Stone has a sword identified as Italian which is actually British cavalry 1780s. I always maintain great respect for all authors of books and articles on the difficult topics of arms history and classifications, and I believe virtually all of the books carry certain disclaimers in the introductions, as well as sincere hopes for others to continue the research to resolve the inevitable errors. I like to think that we are among those who sort of 'pick up the torch'